Guilt
Is a rare bird of shame
Its plumage
Breathtaking
For guilt
Captures the beholder, willing or not
Averting gaze from all else
Guilt will render paradise dowdy
Comparing freedom with the chains of its capture
Guilt is an old, fond bruise
Reminder of moments left torn to shreds
It will piece them carefully back
Twice as convincing, twice the weight
Strung round your neck like noose of sea pearls
Begging to be drowned
Guilt is a rose bush with bleeding thorns
A shudder as you catch yourself thinking of
Those pursed secrets you’ll never disclose, even to yourself
Snapshots you expunge, that still, listlessly, rise from the depths
Never speak of it, even to the merry faced doctors
Plunging their needles as far as they’ll go
Guilt
Makes you sick
Wan faced, old before your time
Aloof in the varnished secret
Guilt
Steals your liberty
But like a lie
Guilt is not vanquished, even by truth
There are things better never admitted
Keep them so deep inside you start believing the deception
Until
Like a wide eyed bride
Guilt takes your hand
And plunges you back where you’ve been all along
There’s no solution to shame when it’s too late to undo
The poison that you drink, the person you’ve turned into
Guarding yourself like a wreck against sharp rocks
With less and less by the day to salvage
If you spoke it out loud
Surely the very sky would catch fire
How many of us must carry a spark?
Burning in our secret hearts?
And maybe this is why
You never know another person by what they share
Instead
It is the unsaid
Electric in the air
We recognize in others
The tarnish of shame
As clear as promises once given
Cannot be refunded
TheFeatheredSleep 